Torture, the CIA, the NYT, war crimes and Mark Mansfield

If you did, why are you writing this FRIVOLOUS, and misleading letter to the New York Times??

This is the most curious allegation of the lot. You, Mr. Mansfield, show your true colors. You are not stating that these actions were lawful, rather you report that "someone else" said it was lawful. Your pretense that saying "this is a fact" is meant for us to be suckers for the thought that "it is lawful what was going on."

But thinking something is lawful does not MAKE it lawful.

What a lawyer says doesn't make it legal.

To be operating within the LAW, you must ensure that the law is met and the CIA had those standards. If there was any doubt, the clear alternative would have been to open up these troubling issues to a comprehensive legal review!


I'll say it plainly, unlawyerly - violations of Geneva set up the citizenry for attack, reprisals and revenge. Chalmers Johnson refers to it as "blowback". I refer to it as "normal behavior" given the circumstances. Better safe than sorry. The United States "sets itself up" for attack by violating the rules of war. Is it now the "policy" of the Central Intelligence Agency to make the United States population terrified of a nuclear war day after day? Has politicization gone this far?

The Agency has avoided a legal review and does not permit court review. Surely, if the CIA through this treatment was "lawful" they would demand judicial review, not destroy the tapes needed for that review.

We have no tape - and those tapes are the PUBLIC'S property. There is no basis to conclude the CIA lawyers were making credible legal assertions. What you ALLEGE is of no concern at all.

Also, just because something is "reviewed" by Congress doesn't mean Congress was fully informed; or that the CIA briefing met the statutory requirement; or that the CIA conduct was meeting the legal requirements under Geneva.

Telling Congress something is going on is not the same as proving to court that the prisoners were or were not treated per the Geneva requirements. They were not, as evidenced by Addington's concern about moving prisoners -- if we moved them, it would implicitly mean the original treatment was not lawful. Perhaps, Mr. Mansfield, in your job capacity, you don't understand Congressional oversight, nor checks and balances .. but your CIA manual surely points out that following Geneva is absolutely right and necessary.

Further, it is non-sense to believe that the "legal review" means anything; or that the lawyers are willing to stand by those legal arguments. The recent Office of Vice President destruction of e-mails hardly meets that standard. The public is watching. The public is alarmed, Mr. Mansfield ..

You do not explicitly deny that there was torture you merely refer to an irrelevant issue.

This is a sleight of hand: by shifting attention from Geneva standards, and focusing on the "accuracy" of the information you were divert us from noticing what is happening.

Torture, including exposing people to cold temperatures, means that the information is not reliable: interrogators cannot tell whether the prisoner is shaking because they are cold; or because they are lying. Let's TRY, shall we, Mr. Mansfield, to get involved in the imaginative process here. What can be obtained when it is impossible, literally, impossible to understand the person undergoing torture, especially when MULTIPLE forms of torture are going on.

The human body is quite delicate - macho myths notwithstanding. The fact is this: when a person is STRESSED, they merely go back to primal behaviours, instinctual behaviors, those which are IMPRINTED. We come into this life with only two fears: fear of falling from heights and fear of loud noises. The rest is IMPRINTED and LEARNED.

Fears produce stress states, not always possible to understand. If one thinks they are going to DIE, in which case, the human being will choose to fight or to flee. The only other alternative to those is to communicate IF one thinks he can be understood. But torture practices precludes any such possibility! There one is master and the other slave - slave to the whims of the torturers. The tortured person is an unwilling participant in a status degradation ritual which he will react to with total fear, terror, horror and dread. To find coping strategies to survive while facing down the CIA torturers, while trying to stay alive - will not produce ANYTHING approaching reliable information!!

How do I know? I was locked in a room with DoJ employees for four and one half hours one day back in 1994 .. an experience never to be forgotten (in fact, I have ALL 17 symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder as a result .. permanently). And I can tell you, if you have imagination failure that, unequivocably, to protect my children by staying alive, I would have said or done just about anything someone told me to do until I felt SAFE. Nothing I did was the least bit reliable since my mind just could not process the terror. There was no one watching, no one following the LAW - I had already been assaulted when I realized I could be killed and it would all be covered up. It simply could not deal with the moment and my body betrayed me totally at the time (and still does with the right stimulous, like looking at torture photographs!)

I note in your letter that you want to shift the issue from "Geneva" to whether the "process" was or wasn't bad. Just for your information: it's all bad - that's why we have Geneva to rely on in an international arena for clear and lawful guidance.

There is NO WAY that CIA interrogation techniques (TORTURE) is going to produce a good result - I am a pro on this. I KNOW. And I'll also say this; torturers, those that would torture, are a special breed who do NOT inspire respect, honesty or cooperation from ANYONE, sane or otherwise - sickening or not. And what's worse, they represent a subculture that breeds upon itself, as torture scholars are showing. The practice of torture always becomes a thing unto itself; a form of collective insanity. It should never be "justified" - legal, small or socially accepted by a small class of government cronies inside the Beltway or anywhere else.

Asserting that something is "small" or "carefully run" defies reality and borders on the delusional, at best.

There have been many interrogations which are alleged to breach Geneva; and the program is not effectively overseen relative to Geneva. The evidenced is in the tape destruction, OVP email destruction, and hiding prisoners in Eastern Europe/Afghanistan away from the ICRC. Think about it, Mr. Mansfield.

Neither I, nor any thinking person can PROVE that torture "has" disrupted plots; or "saved" innocent lives as you so strategically contend.

Strange, torturing an innocent person is hardly saving them, but abusing them in violation of the laws of war. How the CIA justified the torture of Jose Padillo, a United States citizen is way beyond my ken. How torturing TEENAGERS (Omar Khadr springs to mind) saves lives is way beyond my ability to understand. It is to ask too much for those of us that know, to assume any good whatsoever has come of torturing people who were turned in to the CIA so that some hoodlum/opportunist could collect a $5,000 reward. It was asking for serious trouble and concern to set up such a program. Yet the CIA did just that. Petty grievances between people (and greed), became the impetus to committing the crime of rendition/kidnap against innocent people - human beings who were subsequently TORTURED.

Your statement would ask that we believe torturing "someone else of color" is more acceptable than having someone of Caucasian background because "we all know" "those people" are subhuman. Your implicit assertion is racist but hardly comes as a surprise. We've seen the composition of the population the CIA has chose to TORTURE, kidnap and abuse over a period of years now. Perhaps because The Agency has chosen to deal with a self serving and opportunistic batch of thugs over the years, it has forgotten that saving human lives is its mission??

You assert that this was done according to the law, which is the question -- not a premise -- behind the DoJ investigation into the CIA tape destruction. It is wrong and unfair for the US to pretend it is for freedom while engaging in war crimes!! Your letter engages in a non-sense public relations efforts to change the focus from Geneva to whether or not it "felt good" to torture people. It is illegal.

The officers of the C.I.A. who put their lives on the line to gather intelligence on the terrorist threat — and are as committed as anyone to protecting American ideals — deserve better.

You seem to be asking that we forgive the CIA for their war crimes -- without a trial, without examining the alleged Geneva violations -- because they are "putting" their lives on the line; never mind those lives The Agency has taken across the line and back with the abuse.

Again, it doesn't matter that the "intelligence gathering process" was occurring; the issue is whether the POWs were or were not treated per Geneva. They were not.

It is utterly meaningless to talk about "POWs do not have Constitutional rights" when the US Constitution compels the CIA and US government to fully enforce Geneva.

"Terrorist threat" is non-sense, propaganda devised solely by the BuZh administration to shift attention from the alleged war criminals working for the CIA and its' contractors; and is designed to shift attention from Geneva's leashes to the "images of 9-11", which are not justification for violating the laws of war.

No bombing of buildings, not even an attack on the (sanctified?) Pentagon can "justify" breaking the restraints of Geneva. Not even the deaths of over 3,000 people in a single act of terror can justify the breaking of the rule of law. In fact, viewed properly it is a very strong argument for absolutely ensuring that such violations do not in fact occur; otherwise, barbarism rules. The LAWS and regulations are for The Agency's protection as well - lest you forget.